Ads that MOVE

I am fully aware that advertising that appears on the
ChoralNet pages, particularly the home page, is an essential
source of revenue, but please,
I beg you, no
moving/wiggling/dancing/flowing/jumping/rotating
advertisements. I do not mind stationary ads at all,
but find the ones that move in any way
totally
distracting, annoying, offputting, and irritating,
and they have a profoundly negative effect on my website
visiting experience (which is otherwise profoundly
positive).

Julia - I'm guessing that one of the targets of your complaint is the "toaster popup animation" of the six little ChoralNet partner ads at the "footer" of each ChoralNet page. If so, every registered ChoralNet user has the ability to permanently disable that animation by a checkbox on their user profile page (which for you is here: http://www.choralnet.org/view/user/9963). Click on the "Edit Profile" button in the upper right-hand corner, scroll to the bottom, un-tick the "Animation on site footer" option and Submit the edit and poof--those (annoying) animations will be disabled each time you're logged into ChoralNet.

Applauded by an audience of 0

(unknown) on October 15, 2011 9:38am

Hey David:

The "toaster popup animations" were kind of annoying at first, but now I'm used to them and actually don't mind them because they DON'T MOVE once they are up, like toast. (The newish "Who's Online" list at the right is another questionably useful and distracting thing.) I was responding more to the current "Songlearning.com" ad that moves (over and over and over) and looks like water when somebody tosses a pebble into a pond (actually the first time the ad appeared when I was here I thought omygosh there is something wrong with my vision--momentarily very scary until I realized it was the ad), and the "Kl Concerts...Performance Tours Worldwide...etc." ad that has, I think, three different incarnations, one after the other, like different pages becoming visible--1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3,.... It is those kinds of moving advertisements that just keep moving and moving that are impossible, at least for me, to ignore and stay focused on what I am trying to read--which is, of course, why there are moving ads anywhere in the first place, to draw our attention to THEM rather than what we wish to pay attention to. Moving ads probably bring in more revenue than stationary ones, but I hope that the powers-that-be consider the overall effect of adding such distracting ads to an otherwise high-class, PEACEFUL, anti-annoying website.

So, thank you for the information about how to disable the "toaster popup animation." Will doing so disable ALL of the moving ads on the site? If so, GREAT!

Thanks for listening again. I hope more users will chime in on this issue. I can't be the only one who feels this way, but perhaps I'm in the minority.

I'm OK with the various animations/changing elements that bother you, Julia, and I'm a ChoralNet volunteer, but my "work area" is the directory of choirs, so I'm not directly involved in the features of the site (other than to do a little informal testing of things). The "Who's online?" feature can give people a sense of community, in that you can see that others are coming and going, rather than the isolation of just viewing a website alone. As other interactive features are added, I'm guessing there will be other opportunities for user-to-user interaction, especially in the Communities.

As for the banner ads, you can probably block them using a browser plug-in. For example, people using Firefox can install the free "Adblock Plus" add-on and then, when on ChoralNet, right-mouse-click on the banner ads to add a filter that excludes "||choralnet.org/paint/ad/*" from appearing, and "poof" -- no more banner ads. I don't do this on ChoralNet, but I use it on Facebook for a much more pleasant experience.

I arrived at this thread looking for a way to get rid of the bottom ads that rise up (and on my screen, take up more than 10 percent of the screen, and usually block something that I want to click on). David's instructions above didn't help: i edited profile, clicked to cancel the animation, and they are still here. Any more ideas?

Also, they seem immune to adblock+, also mentioned above, I created said filter and they still appear. Using Firefox on windows xp

and I can't click submit without getting rid of the toast first (and as soon as I click submit the toast slides back in obstruction). Also, is it really necessary for the copyright notice to slide up too? Isn't that something that could be put in a permanent unobstrusive location? It takes about 8 percent of the screen, including all in the center not already toasted.

It blocks the partner images from the toaster area. I just did some testing and I think I found your problem. The filter only starts working after you completely clear your browsing cache in Firefox (same thing when using Adblock Plus in Google Chrome). You'll find that in the current Firefox version here: "Tools / Options / Advanced / Network / Cached Web Content" then click on the "Clear Now" button and wait until it's done. Once you've done that, the filter I provided should make the partner graphics in the toaster ads disappear--the grey bar will still be there, but not the taller graphics.

Jane, unticking the box while editing your profile page simply disables the animation (most of the time)--it doesn't make the ads disappear. To do that, you must use Firefox or Chrome and Adblock Plus with the filter I provided to William.

You can also edit your profile and unselect 'Animation in site footer'. The ads will still come up, but they're drawn slightly differently--and you can more easily use the [x] button on them to close them.

What screen resolution (or, alternately, what tablet/phone OS) are you using? The footer ads aren't supposed to come up if you're on a mobile device (because they'd take up all the room), but given that there are lots of mobile devices out there and no testing staff here, this probably isn't working as well as it should.